


Valhalla

by rockafansky



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: AU where Nux survives the crash only to have his sickness catch up with him later, Blood, Character Death, Sad Ending, basically an 1.7k word excuse to give Nux an extended death scene and make myself sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-29 02:57:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11431734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rockafansky/pseuds/rockafansky
Summary: Maybe Freedom would be the Valhalla he had been dreaming of.





	Valhalla

**Author's Note:**

> This one-shot was inspired by an anon message sent to tumblr user dyinghistoric. Listened to 02 Ghosts I by Nine Inch Nails on loop while writing this. It’s 4:00 AM. Thanks for reading.

It was so quiet.

Nux had always expected a fanfare of some sort, when he reached the final stop on his journey, his Ultimate Destination. Here he was greeted with silence. Darkness. Here there were no Great Heroes of the Past. Here he was alone.

Why wasn't it different? Why wasn’t anything _shining_? Nux stared into the darkness as hard as he could in an attempt to take in his new surroundings, only to find them murky and fuzzy, lacking even the faintest glimmer of chrome. There was nothing here. His frustration melted into unease as it occurred to him that this place was not Valhalla. This was Nowhere.

Nux had turned on his Gods. And he had paid the ultimate price.

Something faded into his awareness; a wall, or a floor, flat against his body. Was he lying down? Nux felt the ground beneath him shudder, and all of a sudden, there was something to hang on to. There was a hard surface pressed up against his back, warm from the heat of the wasteland, jostling his body with every bump in the Road. He was moving. The war boy took that fact and held on tight, grappling his way back into the world of what was Real.

_I live, I die… I live again._

“Hah!” It was a struggle to breathe, but now he could see shapes moving above him, could feel the Sun blazing through the car’s windows, feel it warming his bones again. As more of the scene faded into the war boy’s awareness, he confirmed that he was on the floor of a vehicle, and it was heading somewhere fast.

“He’s waking up!” said a voice next to him—a voice belonging to the one known as Capable. As he blinked, he could make out her hair, red as the blood on her hands and arms, blood that probably belonged to him. His arms felt as heavy as lead, but he started to lift one, reaching out, and felt her take his hand in hers.

“Whahappened?” His own voice sounded like it came from much farther away. Two more figures faded into existence above him. The little one, the one called Toast; she was holding something coarse against Nux’s temple, putting pressure on it. The man—his Bloodbag—was hovering nearby, glancing over at him with a practiced alertness.

Capable squeezed his hand. He saw her lips move before the words registered.

“ _I witnessed you_.” It was only a whisper. But it was. Nux squeezed back weakly.

“Witnessed what?” He felt his lips pull into a grin. “I’m still here.” Then Capable smiled, and her face came into focus and Nux saw relief. And his goggles around her neck, he could see those, too. He supposed they looked better there than they ever had on him.

He felt a presence next to him, heard a shuddering breath. Without turning his head, he knew that it was the Imperator. Wounded, but alive. He felt his own kind of relief that she had survived the attack. It was hard to say why, but returning Home in her absence would have felt empty. Nux hoped that she would spare him, after what he had done to her war rig. Unless, somehow, that vehicle was where they all were right now?

 _Impossible_ , he thought. As hard as the war boy tried to look back in his mind, his most recent memory of the rig involved it flipping onto its side as it smashed into the side of the Canyon. _Shiny_.

“I crashed the rig…” Nux said, as if they all hadn’t seen it happen.

“We left it behind.” This was Capable.

“But not me?”

She shook her head. “Not you.”

“We’re in the Gigahorse now,” came the silky voice of the Dag from the front seat, where one of the Vuvalini was behind the wheel. Nux’s eyes widened in amazement. He struggled to pull himself into a sitting position so that he could see.

“Immortan Joe’s Gigahorse?!” Capable and Toast pushed him down, as gently as they could. But not before Nux had caught a glimpse of the body strapped to the second hood. Immediately, he stopped struggling.

“What’s that?” he asked, meeting the eyes of Capable, then Toast. The man, his Bloodbag, turned to avoid his stare, occupying himself with Furiosa’s care instead. It seemed that the bound, tarp-covered form was none of their concern.

“Shh, stay down there,” said Capable as Nux craned his neck to see the bundle again.

The Dag didn’t mind telling. “That would be the Immortan.”

“The Immor—” It took a moment for the news to sink in, but when it did, the war boy’s blood ran cold. _Impossible_.

“Not so immortal after all, is he, War Boy?” asked the Dag from the front of the Gigahorse. In his shock, Nux couldn’t detect the trace of amusement in her voice, but the other former-wives in the car could, and went quiet. In the front seat, he thought he could hear the young one—they called her Cheedo—whispering quietly to her friend. He couldn’t make out what she said.

“Immortan Joe is _dead?_ ” Nux felt lightheaded, but he couldn’t tell if it was the shock or his head injury. He knew that he no longer had a life at the Citadel, not under Joe's command. He had made a choice on the war rig, and there was no going back on it. He knew what the Immortan had been doing to the girls, what lies he had been feeding the People who stood underneath his citadel, waiting for him, each morning. He Killed the World.

Despite this, Nux was stunned with the notion that the man could _die_.

“He’s gone, Nux.” Capable was saying. “We have our freedom now. All of us are free.” Nux was even more surprised to learn that _us_ included him, and the other war boys. It was tough to grasp that they hadn’t been free all along. Maybe Freedom would be something like the Valhalla he had spent his life dreaming about.

“Freedom…” Nux got out. “Sounds…shiny.”

“The shiniest.” said Capable, grinning at him. Nux started to smile back at her, but something seized his throat roughly from inside, and he started coughing, gagging, trying to get back his air.

“Max!” he heard his friend cry, her voice tight with panic. At first, the thought that she’d mispronounced his name somehow made the fit worse. But after another moment, the pressure gave way, leaving him gasping. His vision swam with black spots. Capable moved him, shifting his head to her lap as he took in large gulps of air.

“What's wrong with him, Max?” asked Toast, “Are his lungs collapsing?”

“No.” said his Bloodbag. Suddenly the war boy let out what would have been a great laugh, if it hadn’t come out as a gasp.

“So that’s—” Nux wheezed, “What they call you.”

Max _hmph_ ed.

“I thought he came out of the crash alright,” said Cheedo, peering over the back of her seat. “You told us he wasn’t mortally injured.”

“He isn’t.” said the Bloodbag Max. “This is something else.”

“Max, Max." Nux tested out the name with a weak laugh. Capable’s face went pale.

“What is it?” asked Toast.

“Something Else,” said Nux, feeling woozy. “I know Something Else. That’ll be my mates.”

"He's delirious."

"No, he's not," said Capable. "At least, not completely." As she explained what Nux had told her on the roof of the war rig, Max frowned, his mouth set in a hard line. He looked worse than usual; there was a paleness in his cheeks that Nux didn't recognize. Between that, and the suspicious pinpricks in the crook of Nux's elbow, something told him that the Bloodbag had been doing his duty.

“Joe’s war boys, they’re all like that, aren’t they?” asked the Vuvalini in the driver’s seat. “They’re all sick?”

“ _Some have it worse than others_.” Nux heard Toast mutter.

“Living conditions in the citadel—”

“Why else would human blood bags—”

"Maybe the shock of the crash was—"

“—Bound to catch up with them all sooner or later.”

The rest of the murmurs came in bits and pieces. Nux knew they were talking about him, but how could he join the conversation when their voices were so far away? He felt himself sinking into the floor of the Gigahorse again, and suddenly, it didn’t feel as warm. His eyelids were heavy.

“Can you hear me?” Max was saying to him, quietly. “Nux? Stay with us, now.”

“Hey, Bloodmax.” Nux muttered. "You don't look so good."

“That’s it.” Max untangled something from a loop of fabric in his jacket; a tube. It took the disoriented war boy a minute to recognize it. After all this time, the Bloodbag had kept his hardware.

"Max, not again," said the Vuvalini in the driver's seat.

Nux let go of Capable’s hand. It was too late to stop Max from sticking the needle into his arm, but maybe he could still protect his own. Like a true Universal Donor, Max held up the needle and waited for his blood to travel to the other end of the tube. But when he reached out to find a vein in the war boy’s pale arm, Nux grabbed for his wrist.

His broken iron chain rattled as his fingers locked around Max’s arm. In that moment, Max was just shocked enough to meet the war boy’s eyes, to see that Nux was shaking his head.

"No more."

Some of Max’s blood spilled onto the floor of the Gigahorse. Without a word, he drew out the needle from the crook of his elbow. But he stayed by Nux's side. Despite his quiet, Nux was certain he'd understood.

The inside of the Gigahorse, the chariot of the man who was once his God, seemed to grow farther and farther away from Nux. The light of the glaring sun became dimmer, the voices of his friends softer. The war boy’s bare shoulders shuddered in the unfamiliar cold, and he heard a dull _swoosh_ as Max’s jacket settled on top of him.

“Sorry I stole your boot.” he heard Max say in a low voice.

Nux felt himself smile.


End file.
